When Ashlee and Adam were looking for photographers for their wedding, and Ashlee planned a meeting with us, Adam begged her not to have to come meet with our lame butts, but clearly that wasn't going to happen, so he gave up an hour of his life to come with her. Well, turned out we spent THREE hours talking about everything under the sun, and probably could've gone longer if they hadn't had to get to a family dinner. :) We're all kind of chatty :) So, we were definitely looking forward to seeing them again for their e-shoot, since one thing we quickly picked up on when we met was how much the love to laugh, and that's one of my favorite things to shoot.

We headed over to Chestnut Ridge Park which still had some snow on the ground from last week, which we were pretty stoked about, because, well, what's the point of shooting when it's 18 out if there's not even snow on the ground?! We'll start off with my favorite from Rich - love this!!

Thanks! Yeah, so, this is kindof an amazing shoot because we were all FREEZING. You guys are friggin champs for going all in on a winter shoot. I still can't feel my fingers, by the way. I don't think I've fully adjusted to it being winter yet - I mean, weren't we wearing t-shirts in November this year??

Anyway, to say we like Ashlee and Adam is a vast understatement. We're so tight we're even tank neighbors in Fishville (well, we were until I deleted all my facebook games last week - had to go cold turkey on those, for real). We'd had to postpone our e-shoot twice, once for a hospital visit and once for jury duty, so there was no way we were going to postpone again. Something Ashlee said made a lot of sense, too. Getting winter, snowy photos is a cool (oh crap, no pun) compliment to their upcoming August wedding photos. Besides, we live in Buffalo - this stuff is what we're all about. I once joked with another local photographer that we should start offering workshops called, "How to shoot in the snow."

I love this one, Alyssa - I wonder who paints all the fun stuff they put up in CR around this time of year? Like, did some local artist get commissioned to cut out three thousand wooden candy canes?

I know, right? There are candy canes, EVERYWHERE. :) But yeah, it was about 18 degrees out and ridiculously cold. And every time I thought it couldn't get colder, the wind would pick up! Thanks for that, wind. (a-hole!)

So, clearly, we popped into the lodge there for a bit to get out of the weather, and it was all sorts of decorated for the holidays. So, we couldn't NOT play with that! :)

Christmas card win!!

I often wonder how many times we can have our blue saturn randomly in the back of shots. Hey - your subaru is back there, too, guys! This is my favorite shot I took on Wednesday. I'm a sucker for fences and patterns and crap. That's how we should describe our style, you know that? "Nickel City Studios - they like patterns and crap." It's way better than what we came up before for our portrait shoots, which was, "Nickel City Studios - intimate moments uncomfortably intruded upon by a heavily-tattooed bald guy." No way we were fitting that on a business card.

That's so funny that you pointed that out - I can think of a ton of times I'm editing a photo and was like, well, I guess we can just pretend that was some random car in the parking lot. No one will ever know it's our car! :)

Picnic table in the middle of an icy pond? Check!

My favorite...

So, at the coldest possible moment during the shoot, I had this bright idea to send them up to the top of the bleachers... you know, put them in the worst possible place for wind :) You can't tell half of how miserable they are. Seriously, this was the point of the shoot where Rich accused me of not changing my lenses because I didn't want my hands touching the metal of my lenses. He wasn't entirely incorrect :) You guys so seriously rocked this shoot!

That's okay - I've told the story about a billion and a half times, probably, but I got my hands and feet a little frost-bitten when I was overseas. Now I have ZERO circulation in my fingers once the temperature drops. I know you wanted to punch me in the face, but I appreciate you changing lenses for me when I asked. Nothing is more sad than a grown man who can't change his own glass in the cold. Happiness, though, definitely involves random, red sleighs just hanging around for us to take photos on.

I know, right? I saw it and knew there was no way we were leaving without them in it :)

Guys - you were so much fun - thank you for rocking the cold and being so awesome to hang out with! You guys rock so hard!!!